Alexandra Bristow

Why the epistemologies of trust researchers matter

In this thought piece we take stock of and evaluate the nature of knowledge production in the field of trust research by examining the epistemologies of 167 leading trust scholars, who responded to a short survey. Following a brief review of major epistemological perspectives, we discuss the nature of the prevalent views and their geographical distribution within our field. We call on trust researchers to engage in epistemological reflection, develop their own awareness of alternative epistemologies, and ensure their work draws on and cites relevant research contrary to their preferred epistemological approach. To support this we ask editors of relevant journals to foster pluralism in trust research, publishing work from a range of epistemologies.

Fragments and Links: Organizational Actor‐World of the Harry Potter Phenomenon

The article seeks to develop an Actor‐Network Theory perspective on the relationship between organization and literature by focusing on the Harry Potter phenomenon. The latter is seen as an example of how contemporary popular literature does not stop at itself, but rather supersedes itself by spinning its own truly impressive organizational actor‐network. This industrious industrial entanglement challenges what may be called the ‘disembodied’ conceptualization of literature—the conceptualization that is centred on the contents of works of fiction alone. When the contents of the literary texts are decentred in that they are taken as but one (however important) actor of the actor‐world that comes to be known by their name, other actors become more visible that help to conceptualize Harry Potter as an organizational, as much as a literary, phenomenon.

Being an Early-Career CMS Academic in the Context of Insecurity and ‘Excellence’: The Dialectics of Resistance and Compliance

Drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we conceptualise the latter as a multifaceted, pervasive and contradictory phenomenon. This enables us to examine the predicament in which early-career Critical Management Studies academics find themselves in the current times of academic insecurity and ‘excellence’, as gleaned through this group’s understandings of themselves as resisters and participants in the complex and contradictory forces constituting their field. We draw on 24 semi-structured interviews to map our participants’ accounts of themselves as resisters in terms of different approaches to tensions and contradictions between, on the one hand, the interviewees’ Critical Management Studies alignment and, on the other, the ethos of business school neoliberalism. Emerging from this analysis are three contingent and interlinked narratives of resistance and identity – diplomatic, combative and idealistic – each of which encapsulates a particular mode (negotiation, struggle, and laying one’s own path) of engaging with the relationship between Critical Management Studies and the business school ethos. The three narratives show how early-career Critical Management Studies academics not only use existing tensions, contradictions, overlaps and alliances between these positions to resist and comply with selected forces within each, but also contribute to the (re-)making of such overlaps, alliances, tensions and contradictions. Through this reworking of what it means to be both Critical Management Studies scholars and business school academics, we argue, early-career Critical Management Studies academics can be seen as active resisters and re-constituters of their complex field.

Academic Arrhythmia: Disruption, dissonance and conflict in early academic rhythms

In this paper we examine the changing nature of academic labour and identity during, in particular, the early stages of academic career. Taking the lead from Frost & Taylor’s metaphor of rhythm and...

Critical Learning: An Exploration of the Roles and Development of Early Career CMS Academics

Drawing on a study of 30 CMS Early Career Academics (ECAs) this paper explores how they learn to practice according to their own CMS motivations and maintain such endeavours within environments and evaluation systems which increasingly require high levels of conformity to mainstream managerialist thinking and practice. Applying a Bourdieusian lens to this issue, we focus on the tensions of co-existing between two positions (field and subfield) and explore practices which develop a habitus suited to functioning well in such conditions. The concept of tempered radicalism is used to identify practices and five new strategies which, we argue, constitute a critical habitus of CMS ECAs: recognising the bottom line, finding balance, political savviness, strategic networking and critical friendship, and critical reflexivity. The paper concludes by discussing how support systems might be necessary to ensure the development and growth of the incoming CMS community at a time when it faces increasingly uncertain working conditions and against a backdrop of a growing homogenisation of academic practice within business and management schools.